T HERE is a legend of a peasant who lived
near Paris through the whole Napoleonic
era without ever having heard of the name of
Bonaparte. A story of that kind is enough to
make a man hesitate before he indulges in a flam-
boyant description of social changes. That peas-
ant is more than a symbol of the privacy of human
interest: he is a warning against the incurable ro-
manticism which clings about the idea of a revolu-
tion. Popular history is deceptive if it is used to
furnish a picture for coming events. Like drama
which compresses the tragedy of a lifetime into a
unity of time, place, and action, history foreshort-
ens an epoch into an episode. It gains in poign-
ancy, but loses reality. Men grew from infancy to
old age, their children's children had married and
loved and worked while the social change we
speak of as the industrial revolution was being
consummated. That is why it is so difficult for

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